IMO 12 o clock on high gain with the Elex is extremely loud on this amp. It’s a bit much for me personally… and I don’t consider myself that sensitive to ‘loudness’…
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According to this fella who goes by SMSL_Liu and is apparantly one of the designers of the amp, Balanced output has better cross-talk performance.
what forum is this?
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Looks like it’s the ASR forum.
Yeah it’s ASR… from the review thread of this amp.
I got my SMSL SP200 today from Amazon, more then a month earlier then if I’d have waited for the 789! I have the XLR connected from my SDAC-Balanced, the RCA are split between my speakers and my DarkVoice 336SE and then I have the DarkVoice outs going back into the SMSL SP200 for a nice Hybrid Tube experience so I can enjoy planar with a touch of tube 
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If I have a JDS Labs Atom, what would I get with this over that? Possibly more power? Convenience of XLR output? Would the sound even be any different, because I’m not sure it would be, but people talk about THX like it’s magic.
I’m getting an aeolus in next week, and I think the atom will run it fine, but I’m just curious about this.
I think this would be a step up power wise and might be a bit cleaner. Also you can step up to balanced if you wanted. I would say it’s worthwhile imo if you are looking for a upgrade path from the atom (but if you wanted a different type of sound like something warmer this wouldn’t be it of course). You might also want to upgrade your dac as well
this is not a true balanced amp, theres the same power output in the XLR as in the single ended
I understand that, I’ve got a Topping D50 as my dac, and see no reason to get a balanced setup. That’s why I was comparing it to the atom.
I was thinking of upgrading to a smsl m500 from the D50, but at $400 I was going to wait on that. The amp here seemed like a more important upgrade if it was worth the hype.
Ah then you should be fine then dac wise. I think it would be an upgrade, but not a huge one
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Balanced = lower crosstalk on this amp. Power is the same as antpage mentioned. It works and sounds great through single-ended input and still have plenty of headroom. I think the biggest thing would just having a lot more power (CLEAN power…). It would be good if you picked up some harder to drive planars later on.
how would crosstalk apply here?
Oh boy here we go lol unbal vs bal
crosstalk through the balanced output is just measurably lower (According to SMSL), not sure if it would be considered audible.
Honestly, I think they sound identical. The Atom should have more than enough power. Zach even recommends the Atom.
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AS an example, in the specs for the 887, they list crosstalk for both single-ended and balanced, I assume it’s similar for the sp200.
Though, again, not sure it’s really audible. I personally couldn’t tell the difference.
I should try to find a THX sticker and apply it to the top of my Atom. It’ll make it more magical.
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I was joking, but these stickers actually exist.
Might buy this and put one of the little logos on the Atom just so I can be the jackass who owns the sole Atom with THX tech.
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